Kenya Goans
An excerpt from Forward to Independence Fitz de Souza My
Memoirs. Reproduced with the kind permission of the de Souza family. Available on Amazon Books.
From its inception, Nairobi and its new population were to be
divided by the British along racial lines. Governor John Ainsworth, who had
arrived as a young man in the early 1900s, split Nairobi into seven districts,
making no provision at all for the indigenous Africans. To run the essential
services, and for the maintenance of law and order, Indians prepared to stay on
were recruited, and for those already in business or looking to start, Kenya
was seen as a place of possibilities, somewhere in which despite the harsh
landscape and economic uncertainties, one might perhaps settle and make a
living, even prosper.
Among the Goans who arrived in Nairobi in the early 1900s was
Joaquim Antonio Nazareth, from the village of Moira. Joachim’s brother Raphael
had arrived a few years earlier and started his own bakery, obtaining a six-year
contract from the British to supply bread and cakes to the Uganda Railway, for
whom he had initially worked as a clerk. The Nazareth brothers worked together
in the bakery, later branching out into other business ventures, including a
soda water bottling factory and a store on Government Road.
By this time Joachim and his wife, living in a wood and iron house
on River Road, had four children. The youngest, born in 1908, John Maximian
Nazareth, fell ill one day with typhoid, his young life hanging in the balance.
Tended by a European nurse, the child recovered and would go on to study in
Bombay and then train as a lawyer at the Inns of Court in London, being Called
to the Bar in 1933. This was the man I had already heard so much about and who,
in 1952, I had been surprised at being introduced to him by Pio shortly after
our first meeting: ‘not the J.M.
Nazareth,’ as I put it that day in the Desai Memorial Library. A distinguished
lawyer and Queen’s Counsel, as I recall Nazareth only took civil cases, often
involving charges of defamation. He served as president of the East African
Indian Congress from 1950 to 1952, was elected to the Kenya Legislative Council
from 1956 to 1960, representing the Western Electoral Area, and was a puisne
judge of the Supreme Court in 1953, becoming president of the Kenya Law Society
in 1954. He also became President of the Gandhi Memorial Academy Society and
Chairman of the Gandhi Smarak Nidhi Trust at the University of Nairobi.
Certain individuals in the Indian business community, with the right
connections, were given a head start and the chance to prosper on a larger
scale. A.M. Jeevanjee, who had supplied the Imperial British East Africa
Company with the thousands of railway workers from India, had made big profits
from the contract. The story goes that after arriving at what would become
Nairobi he received a further reward when Ainsworth told him he could have an
area of land stretching as far as he could run, presumably within a certain
time. In the event, Jeevanjee persuaded Ainsworth to let his Pathan servant run
on his behalf, and thus gained all the land between what is now Biashara Street
and the Jeevanjee Gardens, named after him. Jeevanjee was also given the
opportunity to build much of the physical infrastructure of the city including
government offices, railways stations, post offices and a wood and corrugated
iron police station and jail.
While the British occupied the key positions in these institutions,
the clerical and supporting staff continued to comprise mainly Indians, and in
the early days all the records were kept in Urdu. In 1902, Jeevanjee started
the first newspaper in Kenya, the African Standard, published weekly in
Mombasa. When he sold it three years later to two British businessmen, it
became the East African Standard, a daily paper, headquartered from 1910
in Nairobi, and at this time was staunchly pro-colonial in its editorial
content. As for Jeevanjee, some people have estimated that at one time he owned
half of Mombasa, and even more of Nairobi. In 1910 he was elected to Kenya’s
Legislative Council, becoming the first non-white to do so.
Kenya’s National Museum, then named the Coryndon after a former
governor, had been somewhat ahead of the times when in 1941 it opened its doors
to all races thanks to its new curator Canon Leakey. Others had objected to the
move, claiming Africans were ‘smelly’ and Asians ‘over-scented’. Lady Delamere
allegedly remarked that ‘to be within measurable distance of an Indian coolie
is very disagreeable.’ Canon Leakey no doubt saw the irony of this, as the
museum’s forerunner had been established in 1911 with a donation from an
Ismaili from India, Alidina Visram, who in 1863 at the age of 12 had sailed to
Zanzibar and thence to Africa.
Another Asian who had become a fixture in the community was Rosendo
Ribeiro, a Goan who had initially practised medicine in Ponda, before sailing
to Mombasa in 1898. The coastal region being plagued by malaria, Dr Ribeiro had
followed the ‘iron snake’ of the railway to Nairobi and lived for two years in
a tent, compounding medicines with his assistant C. Pinto and, rather like my father
later on, settled for payment in kind, often in the form of chickens.
Eventually the government gave him some land near the station and he built a
dak bungalow, establishing his reputation as the first doctor in Nairobi.
Alongside his medical practice he opened a pharmacy in Victoria Street called
R.Ayres and Co., patenting his own anti-malaria tablets.
In 1908 Dr Ribeiro went to Goa for an extended holiday, where he
married Margareta Lourenco, youngest daughter of a successful lawyer. Returning
to Nairobi with his bride, Ribeiro had soon started a family. Elegantly attired
in a three-piece suit with gold watch chain and homburg hat, the doctor cut a
charismatic figure, not least for the zebra he had bought in 1907, tamed
himself, and rode regularly around the streets of Nairobi making house calls to
his patients. Despite some bizarre and highly apocryphal stories that the
doctor displayed the removed parts of circumcised Kikuyu women in his surgery,
and that he fed his rose bushes on human blood, he appeared to be prospering,
engaging a live-in tailor and nannies to attend to the children and issuing
invitations to dances at his home.
When I had first arrived in Kenya in my teens in the 1940s, Dr
Ribeiro was in his seventies and still riding his zebra, well known and
respected as a former diplomat as well as a doctor, having held the title of
Portugal’s Vice-Consul in Nairobi from 1914 to 1922. Reputedly the first person
to diagnose bubonic plague in Kenya, Rosendo Ribeiro was awarded the OBE. I recall
when he invited our family to dinner one evening at his fine house in Victoria
Street, he apologised discreetly to us for not using the best cutlery as his
wife had locked it away.
Dr Ribeiro on
his zebra
From the early 1900s, as Goans married and started families in and
around Nairobi, their numbers swelled. With this expansion came the growth of
civic institutions and a certain amount of rivalry between the various business
and community leaders. Official political status for Goans was confined to
representation on the town council, and support for popular local causes and
good works could help a candidate gain the one seat available. The Nazareth
brothers (father and uncle of J.M. Nazareth), who employed large numbers of
people, paid for street lights and other neighbourhood improvements, and in
1911 sponsored a Silver Cup for the Asian football tournaments. One or both
Nazareths, Dr Ribeiro and J.M. Campos became regular rivals in the town council
elections.
Goan clubs, large and small, proliferated in the early days of
Nairobi. These associations fostered communal spirit, but there was also
dissent. Elements within the Goan Institute were unashamedly elitist,
restricting membership to those in commercial and professional occupations, and
in 1905 butlers, cooks and tailors were barred. In 1911 the Institute passed a
resolution which declared that ‘In every part of the world, the direction of
communal, social and political affairs of a nucleus of individuals, of a
community, and of a nation is always entrusted to the upper class…’ The Goan
Institute’s first president was the businessman J.M. Campos, but when a
newspaper article referred to him as ‘President of the Goan community’, there
were angry letters stating that the Institute represented barely one quarter of
Nairobi’s 500 Goans.
Dr Rosendo Ribeiro had already been voted for as an alternative
leader for the excluded majority, and to cater for their needs a broader-based
movement, the Goan Union, already active in Bombay, opened a chapter in
Nairobi, offering moral and practical support, including assistance with
welfare, medical and legal matters. This organisation, open to all occupations,
was looked down upon by some of the leading lights of the Goan Institute,
notably P.X. de Gama Rose, who allegedly described the Goan Union as a lot of
illiterate servants not equipped to engage socially or politically with the
educated classes. I believe de Gama Rose had married a European, and talked a
lot about his time at Oxford University. More generally, I do remember
so-called lower-class Goans really being thought of as dirt, complete outcasts.
The rivalry between the two Goan associations led them in 1911 to
clash over which should be the official organiser for the celebrations marking
George V’s coronation. The eagerness on both sides to participate in the event
indicated that East Africa’s Goans were in general pro-British and tended to
run their clubs on the traditional European model. However, one key difference
between the Goan Institute and the Goan Union was that while the former
conducted its communications in English, the latter passed resolutions in the
vernacular Goan language of Konkani. In the light of this choice of language,
and reading their 1911 resolution further, it suggests the Goan Institute
members automatically equated the use of English with being educated, and by
virtue of identification with the British, with status, ‘…an educated man is
better fitted to judge and appreciate the pros and contras of a question… affecting
the interests of the community he belongs to, than an ignorant man.’
In terms of their leadership, the two groups were not completely
separate, with Institute member Dr Ribeiro, for example, serving on the
committee of the Union, and J.M. Campos, the Institute’s first president,
working enthusiastically on behalf of the Union. Others were much more
polarised in their allegiance, with some like F.X. de Gama Rose of the
Institute set on denigrating the Goan Union. At one point J.A. Nazareth wrote a
strong letter to the newspaper in Nairobi, objecting to the hostility on both
sides and calling for a special conference to try to resolve it. To add to the
mix, two more groups arose, the Railway Goan Sports Club, catering for railway
employees, and the Nairobi Goan Tailors Society.
While the Goan Institute and the Railway Club interacted with joint
events, the Tailors Society, for reasons of caste and class, remained apart.
The Goan Institute continued to be exclusive, but at the same time its
influence dwindled until the arrival in 1919 of Dr A.C.L de Souza, whom I have
mentioned earlier. While the Goan Union all but disappeared from Kenya, Dr de
Souza and his wife Mary reinvigorated the Institute to become the main focus of
Goan civic affairs in Nairobi, popular with young and old alike, a welcoming
club where children and young people could spend countless happy hours playing
carom and table tennis, and learning to dance, as I had done in a similar club
in Zanzibar.
For my mother, Goa was probably the place she felt most at home. My
father too had often talked about returning there. I remember when we lived in
Nairobi, how he would sometimes pace up and down at night, talking about going
back and restoring the fortunes and proud reputation of the family liquor
business, for which our ancestors had won medals and plaudits. I had said at
one point that I did not think we should earn money from such a trade.
I had left Goa as a young child, but growing up I was aware of a
rich heritage, the Indian and the European, the Hindu and the Christian. On
returning to Goa for the first time in 1959, after 30 years, I was surprised at
how many things I saw fitted with my memories. I found the caste system was
very strong. I remember when I arrived all these fellows of the lower caste
came to see me, about 30 or 40 of them. My mother said we were supposed to give
them some food and liquor, so we made some toasted grams and they all ate and
drank feni and sang praises to me. Hearing all this I decided to make a speech,
which I had been thinking about for a long time. ‘Listen,’ I told them, ‘all
this caste system is rubbish; we are no more bhatkars than you are mundkars.’
Bhatkar meant landlord, and mundkars were originally people with no property
rights, whose houses could be pulled down and the materials taken by the
landowner. After Indian independence the law had changed so that if you had
lived somewhere for three years you could buy the land and house, which was
right I think.
After I had made the speech, the fellows cheered me. Noticing they
were all still standing, I said, ‘You must all sit down with us,’ and told my
mother to have chairs brought out. Not one of them would sit. I said, ‘Look,
I’m telling you, you’ve got to sit down we are all equal.’ ‘Yes, thank you,’
they replied, ‘but we cannot sit, our fathers would object.’ I said, ‘Your
fathers are not here.’ But they told me it would also bring a curse: that I was
after all more than a landlord and an employer – I was their bhatkar: their
philosopher, their guide.
What makes a Goan? Being born and bred in Goa was always the natural
and obvious qualification. I mentioned earlier however that many, perhaps most
Goans, considered themselves to be Portuguese rather than Indian, Christian
rather than Hindu. I sometimes used to ask such people, ‘Who made you
Portuguese?’ to which they replied, ‘The law.’ There was some truth in this,
and it may have been Salazar that allowed the Christians access to better
schools and other advantages, prompting Goan families to convert.
Further back in history, Christianity and the Portuguese identity
was also spread by soldiers sent out to bolster Goa’s military strength. In the
days before the Suez Canal, the voyage from Portugal might take several months
via the Cape of Good Hope. When the young soldiers arrived and saw the young
local girls swimming, friendships and often romance would blossom. When the
Portuguese Governor of Goa got to hear of this, he decreed that any soldier
seen talking to one of the girls be arrested and taken with her to the nearest
church, where she would then have to convert to Christianity and the two of
them be married.
The Governor further advised his superiors in Lisbon that over time
this policy would swell the Goan population that was loyal to Portugal, and
provide a stream of like-minded, willing administrators and civil servants. The
Portuguese Government, in a quite Machiavellian way, urged him to continue
winning over the indigenous population with similar enticements, such as land
and other rewards. The impact on Goa was thus two-fold, expanding the influence
of the Catholic Church and the imperial power of Portugal.
Many Goans of course also went to Bombay to work for the British.
Alongside them were locals referred to as East Indians, which for a long time I
couldn’t understand, Bombay being on the west coast. The name in fact related
to their employers, the British East India Company. These East Indians, who had
been given chunks of land around Bombay by the British and were often quite
rich, considered themselves very superior to Goans. We had this hierarchy in
Bombay at that time: first were the British, who were considered aristocrats,
regarding those who consorted too much with the locals as second-class
citizens. The offspring of those who assimilated biologically were called
Anglo-Indians, and in time this became more acceptable. Below the Anglos were
the East Indians, then the Christian Indians such as Goans, and lastly the
non-Christian Indians.
With assimilation the number of Anglo-Indians grew. Having held
steady jobs in administration or on the railways, when independence came in
1947, considering themselves British, they left in droves for Britain,
expecting to find similar positions there. Few however were offered work, and
many eventually found their way to Australia. It was very sad for them, because
even if dark as charcoal they invariably talked of being British. They were
also quite anti-Indian. An Anglo-Indian woman I met in London told me that when
she fell in love with a Goan boy her mother threatened to disown her. As a
result she had married a man 30 years older than herself and had a miserable
life.
Like the majority of Indian couples, my parents too of course had
entered an arranged marriage, but they had been of a more similar age and had
enjoyed a happy relationship. As a young man, however, my father had been very
much in love with another girl and they had meant a lot to each other and
wanted to marry. It must have been very painful for both of them when he had to
give her up because of social pressures.
Goans lived and settled in other parts of Africa too. One of my
father’s brothers, my Uncle Joobhoi, became a Catholic priest and was sent by
the church to Mozambique, which like Goa was a Portuguese colony in those days.
Then, when he saw how unfairly the Portuguese authorities and the priesthood
were treating the local population, especially the mixed-race people of
Mozambique, he left the church and started a political newspaper, attacking
Portuguese rule. It wasn’t long before they arrested him. He was obviously a
very strong-willed man and he took a lot of risks, someone whom they would call
today a freedom fighter. A lot of Goans, however, wanted to go and settle in
Mozambique and they must have thought my uncle was mad for supporting these
people as he did, and I believe he became something of an outcast among the
Goan community because of it. There were to be similar attitudes towards myself
among some of the Kenyan Asians during the independence struggle.
In October 2015, my wife Romola and I were invited to a very
interesting talk at the Kenya High Commission in London. The speaker was Sharad
Rao, born in Nairobi in 1936 and now Chairman of the Kenya Judges and
Magistrates Vetting Board. The subject of the talk was ‘Kenya Then and Now –
Asians’ Contribution to the Politics and Development of Kenya’. Sharad had been
Called to the Bar at Lincoln’s Inn a few years after me, in 1959. Back in
Kenya, still under British rule, as Sharad observed, ‘The big law firms were
all European… and it was their stated policy not to accept Asian or African
lawyers, even for articles.’ He also reminded us that racial segregation was
enforced not only in transport, housing, jobs, public toilet facilities, etc.
but also in vital services like hospitals. I was to experience this at first-hand
in pre-independence days when I had an accident in my car.
In 2015, the number of Asians remaining in Kenya was I believe fewer
than 80,000, under 0.2 percent of the country’s 47 million or so inhabitants.
Furthermore, Kenya’s civil service, once an Indian preserve, is I understand
now staffed almost entirely by Africans. Yet Asians, who opened up many of the
most isolated parts of the country, bringing infrastructure, services and
development, remain an indelible part of the country’s history, and despite the
Africanisation programme, a number of those who took Kenyan citizenship after
1968 went on to high achievement in the law, police and civil service. The
Asian community’s philanthropic work in Kenya, past and present, includes the
Platinum Jubilee Hospital built in 1958, now known as the Aga Khan Hospital,
the M.P. Shah Hospital in Nairobi, and in Mombasa the Pandya Memorial Hospital.
In addition, Asian charitable foundations help with food and education for
those in need. I feel proud to have been one of the many involved in these efforts.
Sharad pointed out that the Kenyan Lions Club flourished among the Asian
community, largely because the Rotary Clubs and Masonic Lodges had excluded
them. The Lions have done good work for charity, notably the Eye Hospital
treating cataracts, and the Jaipur Foot Hospital providing many thousands of
free artificial limbs.
Today, the numerous philanthropic programmes supported or set up by
Kenyan Asians benefit largely the African population. Among the most prominent
of such institutions is Nairobi University, and it is here that you can see a
tribute to possibly the most important Asian contribution to the development of
East Africa. Standing on the second floor of one of the campus buildings, it is
a bronze statue of a man wearing a simple dhoti and walking with staff in hand.
It is Mahatma Gandhi, whose political theories and example were the inspiration
for so many who fought for a fairer world. In the days before television or
computers, however, knowledge and ideas could only be spread by word of mouth,
or for those fortunate enough to have learned to read – the ‘white man’s magic’
as Kenyatta described it – through books.
An Indian man, Ambu Patel, played a significant part in bringing
important written works to the people of East Africa. Arriving first in 1955
aged 26, Ambu had trained in India and London as a bookbinder and later set up
his own company in Nairobi producing and selling books, including titles on
Gandhi. Fiercely critical of colonialism, he wrote articles for the press,
formed the ‘Release Jomo’ committee, and employed and looked after Kenyatta’s
daughter Margaret when her father was in detention. Ambu gave Kenyatta the
leather jacket that became a trademark look for the leader, and I recall
something else, a series of photographs he had taken of Kenyatta over some
time, which he had compiled into an album as a tribute to his achievements and
shown to him around the time of independence. One day, some friends and I found
Ambu in a state of great agitation because he could not locate the photographs;
it seemed they had either gone astray or there had been some misunderstanding
and they had been assumed to be a gift. Ambu had probably planned to use the photographs
in a biography of Kenyatta and had no negatives or copies. In 1963, Ambu did
publish his book, entitled The Struggle
for the Release of Jomo and his Colleagues. Ambu Patel was also a great
devotee of Mahatma Gandhi, and thanks to publishers and booksellers, many more
people were able to learn about Gandhi’s life and ideas and to pass that
invaluable knowledge to their children, as my father did.
The above material is the copyright of Fitz de Souza, no part
or parts can be reproduced without permission.
